Travel Stories
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Europe, America and Elsewhere: Idiocy spoken here
25 Oct 2008 | 2 min read | 1
In New York's Village Voice, for 20 years until 1995, there was a weekly comic strip called Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies in which artist Mack guaranteed all the dialogue was a genuine, overheard conversation. And really, you probably couldn't make them up. Here are some genuine, overheard comments - not all by Americans I have to note - which I have picked up along the way. I'll add to... > Read more
Blackball, New Zealand: They won't make them like this anymore
16 Oct 2008 | 5 min read | 8
In small-town Blackball the locals have a saying: “Blackball, the centre of the universe . . . the part where nothing moves”. It helps to have a sense of humour when you live in the centre of a silent universe. These days Blackball, less than half an hour inland from Greymouth, can only boast five major buildings other than the fire station: a general store, two hotels, the... > Read more
Melbourne, Australia: Alt.shopping tips for those who don't shop, but buy
16 Oct 2008 | 5 min read
People like me -- men mostly, I suspect -- don’t like shopping. We certainly buy things, but what some people call shopping seems to entail hours of looking with little to show for it. That’s browsing and that isn’t me. I go to shops and buy things. Sometimes very stupid things. Which explains why I have a beautiful metal replica of Supercar -- from the 60s Gerry... > Read more
Taipei in Taiwan: a visitor's guide
15 Oct 2008 | 3 min read
Taipei - population about 2.5 million - must be the easiest city in the world to leave. A million motor scooters, yellow dust from China, sometimes unbearable heat ... for the tourist it's always time to head home or to the quieter, cleaner but usually more dull cities on the east coast. But some people have business in Taipei, then time to kill before the flight out. Here, then, is a... > Read more
Bangkok, Thailand: To shop, or not. That is the question
6 Oct 2008 | 3 min read
The day after I returned home from Thailand I went to a well-known menswear store on Queen St to buy a tie, not something I can recall having done before. But if a man has had a handsome black silk suit made by one of the thousands of high-quality tailors in Bangkok for a mere $260, a gentleman needs a tie. When the friendly assistant in the menswear gestured toward a selection of... > Read more
Waipari, Taupo: Into the empty valleys full of life
5 Oct 2008 | 5 min read
Roger pulls his four-wheel drive around another bend through the bush and there before us, in the middle of the rough road, is a fawn. Roger brakes gently and we come to a dusty halt. The fawn starts abruptly, looks directly at us for a full half minute, then bounds off into the dense bush. It won’t be the last deer we will see today. In fact on this warm afternoon until a mellow dusk... > Read more
Bako in Sarawak: Monkeys, metaphysics and heavy metal music
10 Sep 2008 | 2 min read
There are many things you can expect at the famous Bako National Park in Sarawak, some 40 minutes from the capital Kuching by car then a small boat across the river. At Bako you could expect proboscis monkeys, biting ants the length of half a matchstick, the Borneo bearded pigs which are so solid you feel you could throw a saddle on them, poisonous snakes, vibrant blue skipper mud crabs in the... > Read more
Mendocino, California: Life in the mellow lane
8 Sep 2008 | 5 min read
The Sir Douglas Quintet out of Texas didn't have too many hits in the 60s but they cracked one successful and catchy single as the decade drew to a close. The band sprung the biggest hit of their career with a paean to the small town of Mendocino 250 kilometres north of San Francisco. San Antonio-born band leader Doug Sahm had relocated to San Francisco as the hippie vibe took off and, like so... > Read more
Seoul, South Korea: Soul to Seoul, a bloggers journal 2008
13 Jun 2008 | 19 min read
Because I always travel cheap I usually forget that not everyone does. Sure I've stayed in some of the world's most luxurious and most private hotels -- but that's what happens unfortunately when you win travel writing awards sponsored by the Small Luxury Hotels of the World group and they insist on putting you up in their exotic and exclusive digs. (see tag) But mostly I end up in... > Read more
Tropical North Queensland 2007: Big and wide but compact
23 Apr 2008 | 19 min read
It is a curious thing, but as big Australian cities boast about themselves and claim their points of difference, they all start to sound similar. Each will tell you of its wonderful seafood restaurants and café culture, hip bars and high-end shopping . . . The interesting thing about Cairns -- the gateway to Tropical North Queensland -- is that it doesn’t boast. Because it... > Read more
Tokaanu, New Zealand 2007: Small towns on a slow up-spin
10 Oct 2007 | 2 min read
About 10 or so years ago I spent a few days in Turangi on the southern shore of Lake Taupo in New Zealand's North Island. I was on an assignment for the Herald. I wish I could say the story involved fishing in a town that boldly asserts it is the Trout Fishing Capital of the World but, in deference to people are dedicated to that sport, I admit my job was somewhat less serious. I was there to... > Read more
Yarra Valley, Victoria, Australia: Art in the hills
11 Jun 2007 | 4 min read
Gazing across the rolling Yarra Valley less than an hour from inner-city Melbourne, the eye can take in columns of grape vines m in orderly lines over low ridges, expensively manicured golf courses, and huge steroid-expanded homes running to many millions of dollars. In the distance lie the blue shimmering hills of the Great Divide. This is where tourists, inter-state visitors and... > Read more
Adelaide, South Australia: The great indoors
8 Jun 2007 | 4 min read
The young man behind the counter at the Art Gallery of South Australia gets talking as I'm buying a catalogue. He comes from somewhere else too but has been in Adelaide, a city with a population approximately that of Auckland, for over a decade. "I haven't seen a traffic jam for 11 years," he says -- and as an Aucklander I add that to the long list of things to like about this city... > Read more
Samoa, USA: What's in a name
5 Jun 2007 | 1 min read
The mere name of a place can act like a magnet for the curious traveller -- and not just those evocative and familiar ones like Paris, Barcelona, Beirut or Beijing which have been burned into us since childhood. But when you finally get to such familiar places they can look . . . well, pretty familiar. Years of watching movies set in them, seeing photographs in magazines, or getting... > Read more
Seattle and the Boeing factory 2005: We have lift-off
5 Jun 2007 | 5 min read
This is the place where words fail, where comparisons seem inadequate or, at best, only marginally helpful. This is where sheer scale overwhelms you, has you gasping. If this were a natural phenomenon you could demur to a higher authority, make reference to the hand of God raising it up from the earth, say something about being humbled in its presence. But Man built this place, so for... > Read more
Ross, South Island of New Zealand: Home is where the hearth is
5 Jun 2007 | 4 min read | 5
Good historic hotels are getting harder to find. Increasingly the elderly pubs of the nation are being gentrified and scrubbed clean. Their walls are being painted up nice, a colour consultant is hired, and the big boys move in and take what was once the character of the place and reshape it into something more . . . marketable? The history that was once in the walls is re-framed and hung on... > Read more
Dunedin, New Zealand: The old hometown looks . . .
5 Jun 2007 | 3 min read
To be honest, I’d only been to Dunedin twice previously -- and I left early both times. A few years ago I spent a night there on my way to somewhere else, and when I was 17 I arrived as snow turned to soggy sludge in a cutting wind. I fled to the airport after an utterly miserable couple of hours. I should have liked Dunedin better on that first damp encounter: I was born and brought up... > Read more
British Columbia's Sunshine Coast: Under the endless blue
31 May 2007 | 5 min read
Paul shoves the cap of his beer bottle into his jacket pocket and settles deeper into the wooden chair. "You know what I say to people who come here and find we don't have television in the rooms or cellphone coverage? I say, 'So what part of the name West Coast Wilderness Lodge' didn't you understand?" We laugh and clink bottles beneath a cloudless sky while squirrels and Stellar... > Read more
The Australian Outback: The Man Who Knew Too Much
1 Mar 2007 | 4 min read
There's a much repeated reason why the men of Outback Australia are so tight-lipped. "Flies. Open your mouth and a fly gets in," says a weather-beaten guy in a faded Akubra at the bar outside Brisbane. He's merely repeating the myth but, by his subsequent silence, confirms the cliche of these men for whom large expanses of dust and scattered scrub is their natural habitat. That, and... > Read more
Southwest Pacific: The Lonely Sea and the Sky
7 Feb 2007 | 4 min read | 1
The day before our Pacific cruise a brief news item caught my attention: a volcano in Vanuatu was spewing ash and thousands of villagers were being evacuated amidst fears of a major explosion. Maybe our restful cruise to Vanuatu would be more dramatic than anticipated? The following day as we cast off from Auckland few other passengers seem to know about this alarming event, and when the... > Read more